


El Tiempo

by skybean



Category: DCU, DCU (Animated), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Depression, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, loss of family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-29
Updated: 2014-09-29
Packaged: 2018-02-19 05:38:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2376782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skybean/pseuds/skybean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Milagro Reyes continued on, after her family died.  She was brave, and her fortitude held her together.  Or so she told her self.</p>
<p>(Alternatively:  Where Milagro Reyes spends her life in denial, and tells herself this is what bravery is.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	El Tiempo

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Impulse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Impulse/gifts).



> I had intended for this to be an entirely different fanfic. But I blame Teddy.

 

In a quiet suburban cul-de-sac, a child's bicycle wheel spun slowly in the front yard of a long abandoned household. Weeds had grown up the sides, and the mailbox proclaiming the home once belonged to the Reyes family had been worn and faded from time.

Milagro Reyes quietly adjusted her ponytail as she walked up the cracked sidewalk to the house that had been legally declared hers two months ago. She hadn't been here in the three years her brother had gone missing, and had preffered to assume the house in El Paso had been abandoned when her parents had died not too long after.

Both Blue Beetle and Green Lantern had their own enemies, and it seemed no supervillain had been willing to leave the old couple who called themselves parents to the superheroes alone.

However, Milagro pressed her house key into the lock of the front door, jiggling the old handle in the manner she always had to--they never had enough money to replace the doorknob, so they'd always just lock the deadbolt--and she stepped inside, weary brown eyes examining the dust on the floor.

Everything had been as she had left it, and Earth, three years prior, and Milagro swore, if she closed her eyes, and listened to the old house creak under her feet, she could pretend her parents just hadn't climbed out of bed yet, and that Jaime'd be cooking right now. But the time was all off, all wrong, and Milagro knew lying to herself wouldn't return the house to its former place as her home.

Her hand went down to her pocket, reaching in and gripping an old, familiar pocketwatch. Jaime had given it to her, and in the years since Milagro had spent as a Green Lantern, she had felt and stared and listened to it so many times that Milagro had felt the family name embossed on it, even though it had long faded to time.

Fingers traced over the lock on the pocketwatch, providing a reassuring weight to Milagro's hands as she continued to walk around, examining the place she had grown up with a melancholy sort of clarity. Of course, she had already determined that she was most likely going to sell this place; Milagro had relocated her home, and had hidden and buried her secret identity so well that nobody'd be able to come after her loved ones again.

She did not stop in her parents' room. Milagro knew for a fact that if she did, she would most likely break down crying. After all, she hadn't been here to clean the bloodstains, and she doubted anybody else would have.

Milagro left as she had came. Quietly, and without leaving a trace of her existance.

She often placed thought to what had happened to her older brother. Jaime had been a decade older than she, true, but it had always felt more as if she had a mix of a mentor and a twin brother. They had been close, never doubting that, and Milagro had been positive that the two would work together, no matter what, to stop crime where it had appeared.

That had been before the day Jaime had disappeared, of course, and Milagro knew she would never be able to look Jaime in the eye, ever again, and apologise for how he had just, one day, disappeared into thin air. She had never been sure what had happened; she had seen Jaime both in and out of costume that day, and had dinner plans with he and his fiance--Bart Allen, the Flash--and Jaime had never showed up, leaving the two forever wondering if Jaime had been kidnapped, or mudered, or God knew what else.

There had been panic, and fear, and people wondering if something like this had happened to Blue Beetle, if it would happen to those who they loved as well. But the two years inbetween Jaime's disappearance and the Reyes couple's deaths had been the two years Milagro merely thought of as Limbo--never acting, always reacting to whatever had come her way.

And when she buried her parents two summers after the disappearnce of her brother, nobody spoke with the youngest Green Lantern out of costume. She had been called back to Oa, and forced herself through mission after mission, and if Milagro had her way right now, she wouldn't be Earthside period; Milagro had been put on-leave while being investigated, due to someone, somewhere, disapproving of how the young woman had gone from the best and brightest with a smile and a zest for life to the quiet, almost angry, mostly depressed thing with a lack of light behind her eyes.

Looking at the tired look behind her brown eyes, Milagro pulled her hair out of the ponytail she had tucked it into, and re-did it; hair had been falling out, giving her this haunted, broken appearance. Milagro didn't like it; she was strong, had pushed herself on before, and going into her old home had been some closure for her. And she'd be damned if she'd let this happen again. She had mourned enough at two filled graves and one empty one, and if she hadn't shed enough tears for anybody's liking, well, Milagro didn't find herself capable of caring.

She didn't cry. Her tears wouldn't bring her parents back to life, wouldn't have brought Jaime back, wouldn't have done  _anything_ useful, and Milagro Reyes had prided herself on always being useful. She'd bend until she broke, and Milagro Reyes, at the age of twenty-four did not break. She had her fortitude (or was it pride?), and the fortitude she had would refuse to let her stop.

Which was how she had found herself stopped at the last place anybody had been able to place Jaime Reyes. The last place he had been seen had been a single-pump fill-up gas station near the garage their father once owned. Jaime had walked inside, paid for twenty dollars of gas, and presumably, had filled up.

Milagro stopped her car, mimicing the events that had happened three years ago. Went in, paid for twenty dollars of gas, and filled up her car. And for all the power the ring on her finger had, for all the intelligence and wits and resolve Milagro had, for the life of her, she did not know what way Jaime had driven off to. They only assumed Jaime had driven off because nobody had found his car, not until nearly a year later, in Gotham City, having been legally sold from an impound to a poor couple of two. The seller had the name of Jaime Reyes attached to it, and all the proper legal documentation.

And so, Milagro assumed that her brother had willingly left his entire life behind, but with no proper leads, had instead chosen to bury him, out of a selfish desire to tell herself Jaime was dead, because nobody could find him, he had never left the planet, not through a boom tube, not through a ship, and nobody knew why or how the Blue Beetle had up and disappeared one day and--

Milagro let go of the steering wheel of her car, staring at the marks her nails had left in it. _Red isn't your colour_ , she told herself, before she merely looked down once more. It was a horrible reminder, and superfical, but it reminded her to not succumb to her rage better than telling herself to keep the self control she prided herself on.

They'd never see her cry. Never. She had built up this isolation, concealed it all, and made it through the days without feeling as best as she could. Ice around her heart to remain distant, Milagro Reyes found herself being followed.

She was aware of the tactic. However, Milagro kept driving, watching the speedometre go up ten miles over the limit, then fifteen, then twenty. They weren't police behind her, she took note. But nonetheless, Milagro didn't take kindly to being followed places. And so as she drove around El Paso, Milagro found herself at a truck stop and climbing out of her car as the person following her stopped. A few more cars did as well, and Milagro found no joy in the fact she'd probably end up fighting.

Milagro found little joy in most things, she took note. And most of that little joy came from things that she hadn't enjoyed before. Most of the things she used to do before those things happened gave her little satisfaction anymore.

But she brought her thoughts back to the present, and she found her body climbing out of the car before she actually had put a thought to stop. And she decided that no. No, if these people, whomever they were, wanted a piece of the youngest of Earth's Green Lanterns, they'd be taking her by force. Lord above knew she was looking for a fight, and well--

Well, Milagro found sick satisfaction as her knuckles met one of the men's jaws. She had moved, and punched, before any of them got a word out, and as she felt bone crack under her fist, Milagro pulled back, looking at the now-broken jawbone of the human male in front of her. And like a cracked damn, Milagro's pent-up frustration began on these foolish men who had decided she was an easy target.

Her voice had begun yelling. It had started as a quiet demand, but as she kept fighting with a practised ease, it had began to end with her screaming about where her brother was, you bastards, where had you taken him?

Her foot connected with someone's jaw in a rather vicious curb-stomp, and she felt someone grab her wrist and pull her away.

“Mila, are you out of your mind?!” Someone was asking, and Milagro had to look up (she had to look up for most, this was nothing new) at the person. First thing she had taken note of were the eyes—they were warm, familiar, and mostly concerned—and then the jawbone, and the mouth, and then the rest of the build of the person.

“No.” Milagro said to Bart Allen. “No, I'm not.” She hadn't spoken to him unless needed. Which mostly came down to only on Justice League business. Right now, however, wasn't Justice League business, and the Flash never came to El Paso, Texas. Not since Jaime disappeared.

“You could have fooled me,” Bart said from up where he was. Which, granted, was about nearly a foot higher—since Bart was up near that six foot mark, and Milagro herself barely grazed five feet.

“You make it sound like this isn't routine,” Milagro gestured to the mess of people around her, “Because in all honesty, I feel like it is.”

Bart frowned and began to lead Milagro back to her car. “Mila,” He sighed, “We were worried when it'd been reported you'd gone missing—”

Missing? Milagro stopped in her tracks, looking up at Bart with a confused look on her face. “I'm missing?” She asked, feeling a bit lost. “I've... Only been gone for a few days, haven't I?”

“A few days?!” Bart demanded and gently pushed Milagro into the passenger seat, before he knelt down a bit, cupping Milagro's face gently. “Try closer to a few weeks. Guy said you just up and disappeared off Oa, and they had no idea where you were. Everyone's been worried senseless about you. You haven't been right since Jaime vanished—”

“Don't say his name,” Milagro cut across, finding herself trying to push herself back into the apathy that'd kept her safe long enough. “Don't say his name, damn you.” She found her fingers tangling into Bart's civvies, and she leaned on him a bit. “I... I found his pocketwatch, and I thought maybe... Maybe if I had started looking...”

“Oh, _Milagro_ ,” Bart said in a way that sounded a bit too familiar (after the funeral, her mind told her, though Milagro tried to push it back under the surface. He sounded like this after the _funeral for Jaime_ ) and Bart gently carded a hand through Milagro's hair. “Milagro, sweetie, Jaime's dead. Remember?”

Milagro dropped her hands from Bart's clothes, and went to her own pocket, and she pulled the pocketwatch out, rubbing her thumb over the worn and faded lid to the watch. “He's not dead,” She said stubbornly, “He's... Just missing. We never found his body. He's probably out there somewhere.”

“Milagro, Jaime's dead.” Bart repeated as he pulled away a bit, looking her over with that same sad look. “You were there at his funeral.”

“He's not dead!” Milagro shouted and tried to push away. She wasn't sure how it worked, but she found herself actually flying off. There had to be someone who knew the truth, right? Right?

She looked back at Bart for a moment, before Milagro took off, going high, and then moving off. She... She couldn't look at him right now. He was reminding her of too many bad things and—wait. Wait. Yes. That was a solid plan.

Sleeping with sort-of-not-really-twins-and-more-clones was _always_ a solid plan.

Which was how Milagro Reyes found herself knocking on the door of Thad Thawne. They'd met a few times before, and had talked a bit, in between the awkward points of 'you're a villain, I'm a hero' and such. So when Thad looked a little startled at seeing Milagro, she pulled him down for a kiss.

And the kiss escalated into more things, involving pressing one of them against the wall, and clothes being pulled off, and Milagro didn't let Thad talk. Milagro didn't want to hear talking; she merely wanted to forget.

And in the morning, Milagro climbed out of Thad's bed before the sun was up. She borrowed his shower—and his clothes, in all honesty—and climbed out the window, and began walking. In all honesty, she wasn't sure where to go. After all, it seemed people were looking for her—whether it be out of concern remained to be seen.

So she paced, and walked, and looked at the damn pocketwatch. Milagro found herself hating it more, and more. Every time she was reminded of its existance, she ended up like this. Lost, alone, and depressed, and unsure of a way out. So she squeezed it tightly, but already knew how this song and dance would end.

She knew already, she would put it back into her pocket, and ignore it until the next time she wanted to forget Jaime was dead.

But this time, Milagro stopped in front of the storm drain, and stared quietly at the pocketwatch. She held it out over the storm drain, and Milagro dropped the antique pocketwatch into the storm drain. It had brought her nothing but pain.

 

 


End file.
